The Academy for Social Purpose in Responsible Entertainment (ASPIRE) partners with universities, community organizations, scholars, and activists to advocate for sustainability and social justice through media-focused teaching and research. ASPIRE teaches digital media production to undergraduates of all majors to enhance their lifelong capacities to undertake social issue advocacy.

ASPIRE Media for Social Change Awards at UCLA

First Annual Student Contest

The Academy for Social Purpose in Responsible Entertainment (ASPIRE) partners with universities, community organizations, scholars, and activists to advocate for sustainability and social justice through media-focused teaching and research. ASPIRE teaches digital media production to undergraduates of all majors to enhance their lifelong capacities to undertake social issue advocacy. The ASPIRE Media for Social Change Awards recognize short student media projects that shed light on social injustices, offer fresh lenses on everyday experience in the early 21st century, or grapple with complicated, difficult questions in the makers’ chosen fields of study.Media works may be experimental, documentary, or scripted in form. Documentation of performance work is also welcome.

While submissions are open to all subjects, we especially welcome entries in the following four categories:

Hybrid Identities

Environment, Ecology, and the Future of the City

Health Equity

Movement and Maps

The deadline for the 2014-15 academic year has passed.

Videos must be under 10 minutes in length and completed after June 1, 2013.Applicants must be enrolled at UCLA as undergraduate or graduate students.Submit your project by emailing a YouTube or Vimeo link to the video submission, one paragraph description of your work, and one paragraph bio to aspirelabucla@gmail.com. Include your name, year, departmental affiliation, and student ID number in the body of the email.Please write “ASPIRE Media Award Submission” in the subject line of the email.

Two contest winners will receive a $500 cash prize from ASPIRE.In addition, winners may have the opportunity to work as paid summer interns with innovative media distribution firms like Seed and Spark to expand the reach of their projects and learn state of the art techniques in making media for social change in a rapidly evolving digital world.

Contact Dr. Andy Rice at andyrice@ucla.edu, ASPIRE Fellow in Socially Engaged Media, if you have questions or concerns.

2014 Winning Videos

A fictional short about the experience of grief. After receiving some unfortunate news, Maia emotionally struggles in a way one would not normally expect. Jackie Li, Communication Studies Sophomore.

This dance film, Sister Soldiers by Neima Patterson, seeks to provide an intimate look into the relationships between black women, revealing the stereotypes they face and combat on an individual level but interpret and understand as a collective. It demonstrates the joy, beauty, pride, and pain of the intersectionality that is black womanhood.